


Hidden Gems

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-08
Updated: 2021-01-08
Packaged: 2021-03-12 01:41:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28627455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: A routine romp to god-knows-where ends up a little differently.
Relationships: Sollux Captor/Aradia Megido
Comments: 1
Kudos: 10





	Hidden Gems

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Aniyha](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aniyha/gifts).



For twelve sweeps, Sollux Captor had been fucking exhausted.

For twelve sweeps, he had listened to the voices of those about to die. He’d heard others talk about how their psychic potential had started slow, how they’d noticed signs here and there until wham! They had psychic powers and everything was fantastic. This was not the case for Sollux. The voices had been without pause since he had emerged from the caverns, and probably even before that -- he just couldn’t remember back that far. The abilities of his caste had manifested around the same time, and how he’d managed to not kill anyone before he had them fully reigned in, he honestly had no idea. The result was that on top of the headache that the endless droning and screaming left him with, his body was its own battery, and that kind of fucking hurt too. Lightning-shaped scars traced his skin here and there, lines of lighter gray that served as a reminder that one day, he would either be enslaved for what he could do, culled, or burn himself out after pushing just a little too hard.

A further side effect of the various fuckups his genome had decided to bestow upon him were the dreams. Every day he was assailed with the worst of visions, each of them unique so that he could never hope to get used to them. When he was young, he’d thought that maybe the voices droning in his head were subconsciously affecting his pan and producing the terrors, but he at some point had come to realize that the visions were probably his psychic abilities actually wandering as he slept, finding the actual sources of the voices and putting them on display for his viewing pleasure, which oftentimes meant snapping awake in his recuperacoon, blood and mayhem still prominent in his mind’s eye.

That is to say: Sollux Captor was fucking exhausted. 

And a little-known fact was that pounding on his door was unlikely to make that any better.

The knocking had started almost the instant he’d snapped awake for the last time, which was also almost just as the sun was setting. Looking out the window of his hive, perched near the top of the stem as it was, he could just barely still see the fierce glow on the horizon. It couldn’t be any later than five. Sollux groaned, grumbling a string of foul curses to himself, but hoisted himself out of the ‘coon anyways, dripping runny slime onto the cheap tile beneath his feet. He knew from experience she wouldn’t leave until she got to see her favorite disgusting freak.

He took his time towelling the slime off and getting dressed (not that there was much time to be taken throwing on the simple, utilitarian shirt and long pants that most trolls wore, but he took his time anyway), knowing full well that even though she’d only knocked once, she was still standing outside. He looked at the clock. Sure enough, it was half past five. Whatever she had for him this time had better be really fucking important, though he also knew full well the kind of thing she came to his hive for at the first fucking crack of evening.

He opened the door, the tarnished, unoiled hinges creaking in protest. Outside stood Aradia Megido, and either she had been grinning at the blank door the entire time, or she had managed to flash it on so quickly he hadn’t even seen her face move. He could never decide which option was weirder, and he’d been dealing with this for seven sweeps now. 

“Sollux!” She said the instant the door was open, probably down to the nearest picosecond. “About time. Come on, I have something to show you.”

“How about we pretend you started that with a good evening, how are you, Sollux. Oh, thanks for asking Aradia, I’m doing pretty fucking terribly, and maybe would like to not be dragged out as soon as the sun goes down for spelunking in some shitty cave.”

Aradia reached out and flicked his nose. “We’re not spelunking tonight, don’t worry. If you’d rather stay here and be miserable, I’ll just go enjoy it alone.”

Sollux sighed, a short, sharp puff of air that perfectly voiced his mood. “What is it?”

She just laughed. “You ask me that every time we do something. I’d think you’d know me well enough by now to know I’m not going to tell you.”

She was completely right, of course. Seven sweeps of getting dragged out to dig sites, caverns, and all manner of other shit she’d found, and she had never once told him where they were going before they got there.

He waved his hand, the signal that between the two of them meant he’d given up, just like he did every time. Aradia, like, two billion, Sollux zero. “Alright. You win, you’ve got the piece of shit out of the hive. Can you at least tell me how far it is?” 

For the first time, Sollux noticed that the hem of Aradia’s grey skirt was coated in dirt. That couldn’t bode well. 

Aradia shrugged. “It’s a little ways away from my hive. It’s not bad, I promise!”

Aradia’s hive was an hour’s flight away. That was manageable, at least.

“Just tell me one thing before I follow you to god-knows-where.”

“Anything.”

“Did you come here while the sun was still up, or were you just sitting outside my hive since last night?”

Aradia just smiled, grabbed his wrist, and pulled him after her.   
\------  
There wasn’t much talking while flying.

There couldn’t be, really; the wind screamed in his ears with the speed at which they travelled, even slowed down to about half of his maximum so he could fly side-by-side with Aradia. That was okay with Sollux; he would just follow where she led, and besides that enjoy the ride.

Flying was something that hadn’t quite lost its novelty, though he had been able to do it since he was very young. There was something nice about the quiet (the wind was loud enough to drown out all but the loudest of the imminently dead), the flashing past of the ground beneath him, the transition from sprawling lowblood city to forests to the grassy plains Aradia lived in. He was above it all for as long as he flew; the people down below would look up and see a star, flashing its red and blue, and wonder what the fuck had just gone past, and in all likelihood would never know it was him or that he had even existed in the first place. Aradia had told him once that the second part was kind of sad; he found it comforting, the lack of a mark he would leave on this shitty planet.

As they flew, he would glance at Aradia, see if she was still there, and each time, the bi-color flashing would highlight her high cheekbones as she flashed a wide smile at him. It was the same as it always was, had been from the beginning, and likely would be through to the end. Then he would go home, finish whatever programming he had time left to do that night, and await the next time.

Aradia waved excitedly down at her lusus as they passed over her hive, standing as she was in the field outside, apparently grazing or foraging for something to eat. Her head perked up at the two trolls flying overhead, but she didn’t chase after them like she had done in the earliest days of these little trips; she must have learned that there wasn’t much chance of catching up to them.

It wasn’t long after that that they touched down, Sollux’s shoes landing on soft, dew-moist grass at the foot of some rolling hills which evolved into mountains in the near distance. It hadn’t been very far after all, especially compared with some of the fuckhuge journeys she had made him come with her on, four-hour flights followed by a two hour walk to a cave system that had taken more than a night to explore to her satisfaction. After that, he had sworn he would never sleep on bare rock again, and to her credit she had never made him, though sometimes when she talked about new caves his trouble detector started buzzing lightly. 

She looked around for a moment, getting her bearings before extending a finger, pointing in some general direction into the hills. “That way!” She said, taking his bony hand in her soft, smooth one and leading him toward ‘that way’.

As they walked, she chatted idly about what she had been doing when she’d found her little jackpot. As she put it, she had been investigating something about an old tribal site, which had been spoken of in a tapestry she found at the site of an enemy tribe, which in turn she had found writing of in an old receipt she had uncovered one one of the digs she’d taken him in. Sollux had been on so many digs where she’d found whispers of some old society or another he’d lost track, so he just took her word for it.

It was about a twenty minute walk before she arrived at the correct hill, one with a spiky rock outcropping at the top and with a rock opening at the base that looked awfully like…

“I thought you said there were no caves this time,” Sollux said, his hand still clutched in hers. 

“I said there was no spelunking,” she replied, giving his hand a quick double-tug to urge him inside. “That’s a very big difference.” 

“What’s in there?”

“You’ll see! Now come on, stop being a wiggler.” 

Grumbling to himself, he took a few steps inside before Aradia stopped short again, pulling her hand out of his.

“Wait, I just thought of something,” she said, taking a step to stand behind Sollux. He turned to look at her.

“What, taking me hive?”

“Shut up and turn around,” she said, her tone more suggestive of a polite request than a command. Regardless, he did so, and she reached over his shoulders, putting her hands over his eyes. 

“Please don’t tell me we’re actually doing this thing.”

“It’s a surprise! If I tell you to close your eyes you’ll just peek.”

And so it was that he shuffled forward, Aradia following close behind, her hands stalwartly blinding him. The sound of their footsteps seemed to dampen somehow, while at the same time echoing more and more. He could feel heat, and moisture gathering on his face, and a warm, gentle rush of air blowing his hair back just slightly.

Aradia removed her hands.

They were standing in a chamber perhaps fifteen feet across, the floor made of uneven, slick stone, with small patches of some kind lichen growing on them. From the rocky walls and ceiling jutted large groups of a bluish crystal, some of the patches two or three feet in diameter, and some of the individual crystals a foot long. It was undeniably beautiful, even for Sollux, and he stood a moment, taking it all in. The heat and humidity, though, came from the center of the room; there, from a small fissure in the rock, was a hot spring. The water roiled and bubbled and steamed, clear as glass all the way to the bottom. 

Sollux stood and stared.

“I told you,” Aradia said from behind him. “Isn’t this great, Sollux?”

“Alright, this actually is pretty great.”

“Let’s get in,” she said, walking in front of him and laying her removed shoes by the edge of the pool. “It’ll be nice.”

For once, Sollux couldn’t argue or complain. Getting in actually did sound pretty nice, and he was sure she already would have made sure the water didn’t have caustic chemicals or something in it. He stripped down, feeling more than a little self-conscious at his long, thin limbs, his branching scars, his generally disgusting body. Aradia did the same, and almost at the same time, they climbed down into the fissure, the smooth water accepting the two of them  
.  
The water was exquisitely warm, and Sollux couldn’t stop a contented shudder from running down his spine as it took him in. It was shallow enough that he could sit on the bottom of the pool, against the curve of the thing, and his head and shoulders still rose above the surface. There wasn’t a ton of space, and it took some bending and folding of his legs, but eventually they figured out seating, with Aradia sitting beside him, her dark hair fanning out in a dark cloud as the water rose up to her neck.

She sighed happily, a long, flowing, harmonious sound, as she stretched for a full ten seconds, thrusting her bare chest forward and her long arms out. She resumed her original position and turned, smiling at Sollux.

“Isn’t this great?” She asked dreamily.

“You already asked that.”

She giggled at him. “Yeah. Sorry, the water’s nice! I’m all sleepy.”

It was true; Sollux could feel his muscles relaxing, his eyelids growing heavy. “Yeah, me too,” he confirmed. “Maybe I’ll catch up on the sleep I would have gotten.”

Aradia laughed again, but more quietly, less happily. “I’m sorry I got you up so early.”

She had never once apologized before for dragging him on these little escapades. It caught him a little off guard, and he didn’t know what to say for a moment. “It’s...fine,” he said.

She smiled again. “It doesn’t sound all that fine.”

Sollux felt like a fucking asshole. Why had he even said what he did? “No, it’s really fine,” he asserted, turning to look her in the eye. Her irises were finally filled in with the color of her blood, a deep, rusty maroon. His eyes were the usual freakish blue and scarlet. “I like coming on these things with you.”

Her smile grew wider. “Oh, you do, do you?” She asked, in a tone that suggested she had never not known the answer. 

His face was getting hot. The water must have been heating him up. “Yeah, I do,” he said seriously. “If it wasn’t for you I’d probably be a dried up husk in my hive by this point, and I’m sorry I give you a hard time for it. I don’t really mean it.”

“I know you don’t, Sollux.”

He just continued. “I wouldn’t actually go on these things if I didn’t want to, right? Like I bitch and moan and act like an asshole about it, but if I didn’t want to…” He trailed off, looking for the right words. The heat in his face grew, and he knew it wasn’t just the water. He was so fucking bad at this, but he knew he had to say something, it was a weird urge deep in his gut, like if he didn’t get it out he’d die and she would never know. 

Aradia just watched him patiently.

“If I didn’t want to spend time doing these things with you, I wouldn’t. If you were like anyone else I absolutely wouldn’t, but you’re not completely insufferable. You’re actually kind of -- kind of great.”

She rolled her eyes and laughed. “You don’t have to say all that,” she said, scooting closer to him, resting her hand atop his. “You can be a little shitty, but I know you don’t mean it! You’re kind of an open book, you know.” She laughed again, more softly. “If any of it actually seemed sincere, my feelings would be hurt, and I wouldn’t take you on these anymore.” She paused, and for just a second, her face seemed almost sad. If Sollux hadn’t been looking for it, he wouldn’t have caught it at all. “The feelings are mutual.”

Sollux didn’t have a very good response for that. He just kind of sat there, looking at her with what felt like a dumb expression on his face as she looked back at him, her gentle little smile present as ever. 

“What do your spirits have to say?” He asked lamely, just something to break the silence. 

Aradia just shrugged. “I haven’t really been paying attention to them,” she said quietly. “I’ve just been enjoying this.” But even as she spoke, she smiled a private little smile, and he could actually see her face grow redder than the heat had already made it. He knew what that smile meant by now; her spirits had something interesting to say.

He hadn’t really been paying attention to his own voices, either, but even as that thought occurred to him he realized something. He had long ago learned to tune them out, because trying to track down and save individual victims always failed horribly -- after all, they were the imminently deceased, and the future was certain. Even after he’d learned to tune them out, though, they were still there, a constant feedback that at best produced a thick headache and at worst made him want to howl and burn himself out with one last psionic suicide burst. But right then, sitting in that cave with Aradia, they seemed...quieter, somehow, more muted. They were still there, for sure, but he could ignore them completely. He hadn’t even noticed.

He realized he’d kind of been staring into space and shook himself back to attention. Aradia didn’t seem like her eyes had deviated from him in the slightest, and the smile on her face looked...different, somehow, than usual. 

In fact, something seemed different in general. He and Aradia had been in some tight spots together, squeezing through caves, pressed together as they moved step by step, but he’d never really...noticed before. Not like this. But now, he felt her hand on his, warm even through the hot water; he felt her arm brushing his, and their knees bumping together, and he felt...her, somehow, in a way he never quite had before. 

That was right about when Sollux put two and two together for himself.

He’d never voiced to her before that he actually enjoyed these things, his own apparent obviousness notwithstanding, but it was completely true. If some random troll met him in the street and was asked what he liked to do, the answer would probably be something something programming something not eating, not spelunking and digging up graves and carrying around 150 pounds of bones with his psionics while she studied some map she’d found somewhere. And in fact, those were not things he liked doing, except for the fact that Aradia was there. And as he sat there, staring at her as she stared at him without a word between them, things seemed so clear and obvious he felt like even more of an idiot for never seeing it before.

He was completely in love with her, and he was almost certain the feelings were mutual.

Without saying anything, he turned to face her, pulling his hand out from under hers as he held his arms out wide. He didn’t even have to say anything, and there wasn’t a moment of hesitation from her. She pulled herself into his arms like it was the most natural thing in the world, stretching herself out as she laid her head against his chest, her arms wrapping around his back in turn.

They sat in silence for another moment, Sollux enjoying the feeling of her weight and the gentle sound of her breathing, before he spoke.

“So,” he said.

“Tho,” she said back, mocking his lisp.

“Did your spirits tell you to do this?”

She chuckled against him. “No. Well, yes, but I’ve been thinking about it a long time.”

He ran his fingers through her thick hair, following the wet mop all the way down her back before returning to the top and starting anew. “Not quite like this, though, right? I mean, you did just find this place.”

Her chuckle turned into a proper laugh. “Oh! No, I’ve known about this place for a long time now, actually...didn’t you notice how close it was to my hive?”

“Yeah, I did. How long have you known?"

She thought for a moment, taking a long, deep breath that pressed against his own chest in a way that threatened to make his head spin. “I don’t remember, exactly. Five, maybe six sweeps? I’ve been coming here a long time.” She turned her head up to face him, locking her eyes on hers. He pressed a hand to her cheek, and couldn’t stop a smile from spreading on his own face as he felt the grin grow beneath his fingers. “I just wanted to share it with you when -- when the time was right.”

“And what about tonight made it seem right? Did you come to my place with the intent of making me realize I don’t know how to process my emotions or did that come later?”

She turned her attention to the faint, scattered, lightning-pattern scars on his chest. She ran one finger idly along them. “This was always going to happen.”

“You think so?”

“I know so.”

Sollux thought his cheeks might catch fire. He wished he’d had the introspection or basic emotional intelligence to realize how he really felt long ago, because now that he was here? He never wanted this feeling to stop, ever. He doubted he would ever not complain about whatever adventures she wanted to drag him on, but he would go on them for as long as he lived, he decided.

His attention was drawn back as he felt a gentle kiss pressed to his scar. He grinned, so broad and sharp he thought his cheeks might tear, and he knew his gross, fucked-up teeth were showing but he couldn’t give less of a shit about either of those right now.

“Hey.”

She looked up at him, and the expectation in her eyes told them she was on exactly the same page.

Their first kiss, and in fact his first kiss, was a small, quick little thing, probably not lasting more than two seconds. At any other time he would be convinced he was fucking up, doing something wrong, but there was not a single thing about it that wasn’t completely, incredibly right, straight down to his soul. Everything was there and around them, and for the first time in his life, he knew exactly who he was, and exactly what he was doing.

She parted from him, resting her forearms on his chest and laying her head atop those, simply gazing at him as he stroked her hair with gentle hands that he hoped she didn’t notice were shaking.

“How long you think we’ve been here?” He asked distractedly. “You want to get out?”

“No,” she said, pressing another kiss to his chest. “Let’s stay here a little longer.”

And that suited him just fine.

**Author's Note:**

> ive never written fluff before, but wanted to cheer a friend up  
> hope ye like it


End file.
